My friend Scott Carrino, a musician and the co-owner of the Round House Cafe invited me over to his farm today to spend some time in his sugar house, where he was boiling sap in a room that looked a lot like George Forss’s darkroom – steam, tubes, boiling vats. Sugar house sapping is a much loved tradition around here, the sappers hole up in steamy, sweet-swelling rooms and boil huge vats of sap from trees into small buckets of valuable golden liquid, maple syrup. Scott and I were going to do some writing together, but we got distracted tallking and Scott was scrambling around to keep the sap flowing and boiling and turning into maple syrup. I got my own small jar, the first batch.

Scott thinks this will be a very short sapping season, the nights are supposed to get warmer later in the week. I didn’t understand the process too well but I loved the toddy he made me from sap and scotch. Scott sells his sap for $25 a quart, it tasted pretty wonderful. I will be back there Thursday and will post some photos on Facebook. It was very nice holding up with Scott and Red in the sugar house.